RE: ISPs slowing P2P traffic...

[<michael.dillon () bt com>]

> I would be much happier creating a torrent server at the data 
> center level that customers could seed/upload from rather 
> than doing it over 
> the last mile.   I don't see this working from a legal 
> standpoint though.

Seriously, I would discuss this with some lawyers who have
experience in the Internet area before coming to a conclusion
on this. The law is as complex as the Internet itself.

In particular, there is a technical reason for setting up 
such torrent seeding servers in a data center and that 
technical reason is not that different from setting up
a web-caching server (either in or out) in a data center.
Or setting up a web server for customers in your data center.

As long as you process takedown notices for illegal torrents
in the same way that you process takedown notices for illegal
web content, you may be able to make this work.

Go to Google and read a half-dozen articles about "sideloading"
to compare it to what you want to do. In fact, sideload.com may
have done some of the initial legal legwork for you. It's worth
discussing this with a lawyer to find out the limits in which 
you can work and still be legal.

> From a technical point of view, if your Bittorrent protocol seeder
does not have a copy of the file on its harddrive, but pulls it
in from the customer's computer, you would only be caching the
file in RAM and there is some legal precedent going back into
the pre-Internet era that exempts such copies from legislation.

--Michael Dillon